


At Dusk

by mnemosyne



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne/pseuds/mnemosyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rick Grimes is an old man and melancholy is not his only friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Dusk

There’s an old man sitting on the floor, back pressed against a crumbled low stone wall. He’s drinking something from a glass bottle, every so often swirling the mixture inside, holding it up to the light like it’s something he can’t quite remember ever tasting before. The sunlight reflects off his greying hair, and does not hide the jagged scars that pattern his weatherbeaten skin.

Stones fall from the wall as someone sits down on the piece of wall next to him, dislodging small bursts of chalk and dried grass seed. The old man holds up his bottle, tilting the neck out, but the newcomer, younger, the frown lines on his face not yet etched into indelible marks of memories teetering in the gap between painful remembrance and devastating forget, waves it away.

“Not what I came here for,” he says.

The old man shrugs and takes another swig. His elbow digs painfully into a jagged bit of stone and he shifts; it is of little surprise to either when his shoulder comes to rest against the younger man’s shin. He looks up, into brown eyes and a face that’s as familiar to him as his own. Moreso, perhaps.

“Why?” says the old man.

“Probably so you can confess all your sins to me.” The young man laughs, pulls out a small box from a back pocket. With quick movements, he opens it, removes a small paper, and begins to roll a cigarette. “Or shout about all the dumbass mistakes we made. Something like that.”

“Too much effort,” is the reply. His companion nods, sharp, and raises the rolled paper to his lips.

“Yeah.”

There’s silence for a few moments; somewhere, not too far away, a pair of voices raise in argument. The old man squints up at the sky, where small clouds are scudding fast against the vast expanse. A bird circles overhead, a black fleck against the perfect cleanliness of white and blue.

“I forgave myself,” he confesses. He looks up at the young man, reaches a hand out to grip his thigh. “I had to. I couldn’t move on.”

“That right?”

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be talking about?”

The tip of the cigarette glows orange-gold.

“Honestly, man, I don’t even know. Tell you the truth, this is your head.”

The old man gazes out, at green fields and blue sky. Somewhere in the distance, he can see a tall wire fence, and a familiar melody starts playing on his heartstrings. He can’t quite remember why, or what it is.

“It wasn’t easy, after,” he says. “After _you._ I lost my way, and then I found it. And then I fell off the path so hard,” he laughs, “down into a dozen ditches. I can’t say I didn’t deserve it.” A warm pressure rests on the back of his neck, and he leans into the touch. His fingers are shaking, and he curls them into his fist. “There were good times, there were. But it was _hard_.”

He stops talking then, stares at his hands and the bottle. Arching one arm, he throws the bottle as hard as he can down the path, watches it glitter in the air, the last remaining drops inside splashing haphazard into dust, before disappearing out of sight; there is no sound and he doesn’t know where it lands. Not that it matters at all. Not much seems to these days.

“You want to know something?” asks the young man. “You want to know how I know it’s in your head?” His companion squints at him, and is rewarded with a playful kick, a light press of toes against his elbow. “I know because I was up there on that cloud with the angels.”

“So?”

The young man frowns. He reaches out for the bottle and takes a long swig of it before he replies. “I know what I did.”

“So do I. That’s why you’re _there_.”

The young man snorts, looking away, but there is a small smile playing upon his lips. His tongue darts out, wetting them, and he does not look back at the older man before he speaks again.

“Sap,” he says at last.

The old man laughs then, and for a moment in the fading evening light, almost glows with a long-forgotten youth. He stretches a little, and for the first time since he can remember, his limbs don’t seem to ache. There’s a burning in him, an ember of something that feels like a memory from a long, long time ago. On the breeze, the sound of a young woman’s voice rises, and his heart beats low and strong in reply.

“Goodnight, Rick,” says his companion, and leans down to twine his fingers around Rick’s own. He squeezes them once, gentle as a whisper in a graveyard. “Your family’s waiting.”


End file.
